“Health Education England (HEE) exists for one reason only: to support the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement to the patients and public of England by ensuring that the workforce of today and tomorrow has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place.”
HEE runs as a single organisation, with 4 regional hubs working across 12 local offices.
The Intellectual Disabilities workforce programme is a regional programme working across the south of England.
The programme has a single aim “to create a sustainable and secure workforce supply, for people that have Intellectual Disabilities and/ or Autism, who require support from and/ or access to services”. All of our work is about how the workforce can support people with an Intellectual Disability to lead healthy and fulfilling lives like any other. The programme began in Kent, Surrey & Sussex in 2013 and remains a trail-blazer within HEE as it is the only programme of this type. In September 2017 it expanded to include London for a year, in April 2018 it further expanded to include the whole of the South.
Please can I introduce you to:
Philippa Spicer (Senior Responsible Officer LEFT), Rhona Westrip (Programme Manager CENTER), and me George Matuska (clinical lead RIGHT). The programme is a collaboration between people with lived experience and the workforce, so we hope to be adding to this rogues gallery over the coming year.
As part of the expansion across the whole of the South, we want to trial a monthly blog updating you, the stakeholders, and anyone with an interest in what the programme has been up to.
This is where we currently are:
- As of April 2018 we extended our coverage of the programme to cover the whole of the south of England and also continue to support London up to September 2018.
- It has been a little less than 18 months since we published our last update report:
We have now drafted our next update and hope to publish it over the subsequent weeks. We will post a link as soon as we do this.
- Throughout 2016/17 we have been able to support a range of pilot projects led by different providers across both the health and care sector. These are co-produced with experts by experience and aim to overcome challenges that the providers have identified, in order to develop and support their workforce. Part of our offer of support agreement is that all projects share all their learning, report back on what went well, and what didn’t go so well, and suggest ways forwards for others who might want to carry on the work. Any tools and resources developed along the way are also shared freely. We have now developed a public update page on this site so that you can read about and make contact with any of the projects we currently have underway.
- We have also been busy updating our pilot projects reports page that contains links to completed reports, tools and resources.
- This month we have been meeting with a number of our pilot project stakeholders to finalise their reports and the easy read summaries before we share them with you. The most recently completed project we have already “soft launched” is the “Communicating Effectively & Ethically with Young People with Learning Disabilities and their Families regarding End of Life Care Planning” which we are aiming to officially launch and share over the coming weeks.
- If you haven’t already, have a look at two of our publications available for people to access and use to develop their workforce:
Dates for your diaries
- May 15th – South #RNLD Nursing Workforce Summit
May 17th – London #LD Nursing Workforce Summit
- May 25th – Sound of the Student & Trainee Voice Event
- June 21st – SAVE THE DATE: Kent, Surrey & Sussex LD Community of Practice Conference 2018 ‘Sustaining Our Community’
Become a stakeholder
If you want to become a stakeholder and receive a copy of this monthly blog, along with a weekly summary email updating you on any news posted via this site click on the signup button below complete and complete the online form.
Getting in touch
If you have any question or comments please get in touch with us via email LaSEID@hee.nhs.uk or tweet us at @HEE_LKSSID and dont forget to use our #LKSSID
Workforce Development for & with People with Intellectual Disabilities 
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